


homemade dynamite

by cloudtalking



Category: Green Creek Series - T.J. Klune
Genre: Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Murder, M/M, Soulmate AU, glo up, robert livingstone’s A+ parenting, somehow turned into an entirely different au, sounding like the fucking host up in here, valentines day exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-26 04:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13850118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudtalking/pseuds/cloudtalking
Summary: for @blurredmxnds on tumblrto be a witch is to have a void in your body where your soul should be, a void filled by magic and bloodlust. to be a witch is to not have a soul at all, to not have a soulmate.gordo, as always, seems to be the exception.





	homemade dynamite

**Author's Note:**

> I’m sry this is up so late!!! ur original courter wasn’t able to finish their piece so I stepped up instead but I hope you like this half as much as u would’ve liked theirs!!

Magic is the culmination of beauty and power. Gordo lets it surround him, lets it clothe his broken and fragile bones in its glamours. Magic was long since woven into his flesh, the scars of sacrificed humanity inked into his skin.

Gordo would be hollow if not for magic. Magic built him his body, magic fed him his life, magic gave his world color. Gordo by himself is simply a shell of bone and tissue. magic is what pumps his heart, the force that breathes air into his lungs.

Witches are creatures borne from magic and placed into human vessels, cannibalizing the preexisting soul. Nothing about them is natural, terrestrial, holy. Witches are the absence of order, are chaotic in every meaning of the word.

Witches don’t belong on the same dimensional plane as those of flesh and blood. They are neither welcome nor needed, parasites hiding in human flesh.

Many found the need to exterminate them themselves. pitchforks and stonings and burnings. pyres raised, ropes tied around trees, river rapids stained red with blood. More inventive ways to kill what was never truly alive to begin with.

The ill will is not unprovoked. Humans are born with earthen souls, and earthen souls always have a match. Humans are always one part of a whole, always a small cluster of their original clouds of stardust.

In destroying their host, witches destroy one piece of a whole. In killing the rightful owner of their vessels, they kill someone’s soulmate.

However, the actions of humans are not in any way justified. it is a life for a life, magic stealing from the earth in exchange for her children to walk free. A witch does not deserve to die to justify the death of someone who has never had a chance to exist past the womb. A witch does not deserve to suffer the consequences of a murder that was not committed by them in the first place.

Witches fought back, letting their wrath cut through the children of earth like a scythe through grain, cutting them clean in two. This is our power. If you want to fear us, we’ll give you something to fear.

Robert Livingstone is one of Magic’s top warriors in the war. He shows no mercy or restraint, seeing humans as cockroaches infesting a house he has recently moved into. Humans were there first, the children of the earth made their ancestral home on gaeia, they had roots so deep in the earth that witches could barely imitate the ease on which they walk across the dirt. However, magic has yet to fail in conquering whatever form it wishes to inhabit. Even the earth should not last long against her wrath. No one could survive a siege ordered by magic, especially not with Robert Livingstone leading her army into battle.

Gordo has grown up knowing his father to be bloodthirsty and ruthless, not only on the battlefield. No obstacle would stand in his way, and if he convinced himself that his seven year old’s lack of pain tolerance was a problem, he would overcome that obstacle as well.

Gordo’s earliest memories of his father are being shut out by him, locked in dark rooms to deal with his own thoughts and told not to make a noise while his father went over battle plans. Gordo’s later memories are only of blood and pain. It was demonstrated in great detail what the consequences are for little boys who get caught breaking their father’s rules.

Luckily, Gordo is eighteen now. He knows not to get caught.

Running away is the easy part. His father knows not of his plans, knows nothing of the the car he has acquired, knows not of what happens at the house while he is away.

Staying away is harder. His father knows more tracking spells than Gordo has tattoos, at least half of the incantations learned just to threaten Gordo with. There was no point in leaving if he was just going to be dragged back by his father’s cruel hands. The punishment for trying still keeps him up at night, scream lodged in his throat and fingers gripping the sheets like claws, almost ripping through the thin fabric.

However, Gordo is at least half the witch his father is. He knows how to conceal his location like he knows how to breathe, a skill that has saved him the effort of covering up bruises more times than he can count. This is just using the same spells on a larger scale. He prays to a god he has never believed in that it will work.

“Your father left half an hour ago,” one of his father’s men says, answering his entirely too enthusiastic question. “He will be back for breakfast tomorrow, not that he will be spending it with you.”

Gordo nods, doing his best to keep the hopeful glint out of his eyes. “Thank you.”

He has been climbing in and out of his window since he turned five, so that much is easy. He takes the keys to his rental out of his pocket and retrieves it from its hiding place in the parking lot of the local auto shop. He had been working since age sixteen, so the owner had not questioned it when gordo told him he was leaving it there.

Tired and sweaty from running all the way into town, Gordo slumps into the front seat.

This is happening. He’s running away. He’s not coming back. It’s not like there’s much to leave behind anyway.

He turns the key in the ignition and starts his road trip to freedom. It sounds entirely more poetic than it really is, provisions of protein bars and takis in the backseat betraying how well prepared he really is.

He drives until he runs out of gas money, safely out of range of his father’s radar, unable sense magic even as powerful as a livingstone’s from such a distance.

GREEN CREEK, OREGON, reads the proud but faded sign Gordo passes on his search for a hotel. he can’t say there’s any better place to crash while on the run from his father than smack in the middle of nowhere.

The town matches its sign; proud but faded. Shops with merchandise twenty years too late to be appreciated by the youth litter the streets, a good third of them already closed and another third well on their way.

The houses are only mildly decrepit, lined up too close to the sidewalk. They all need a good power wash, but they’re already so washed out that the grime seems to add more character than the paint job.

It’s a gray day, saturated clouds and heavy air settling comfortably on the earth. Green Creek, for all its faults, thrives here. It’s a town with one foot in the grave, but the other foot is steady on the earth.

When Gordo finds an inn to stay at, the staff are kind, if tired. Excited to have tenants to aid their rapidly failing business. The owners, living in the inn themselves, looked dangerously close to retirement. They, like the town, were comfortable slowly deteriorating. A couple finding comfort in their shared aching bones and memories, fine with dying as long as it was in their sleep.

Robert Livingstone stayed in cities and rich neighborhoods. Even the hideouts were unnecessarily luxurious. There was no way a king, however how much he wished to disavow his son, would look for him amongst peasants.

“Greg and Martha have been together all their lives,” the receptionist sighs as if gordo had asked. “They met when they were in kindergarten, you know. Found their soulmates before anyone else did.”

The old couple she’s indicating share a booth in the inn’s arguably much more popular diner, available to both tenants and locals.

Looking at them, it is easy to tell what separates humans from witches.

The couple appear to be stolen from a movie, the epilogue of a fairytale. They smile at each other as if the other holds the sun. They look into each other’s eyes as if they have lost themselves in the other’s gaze. Their hands are woven together across the table, conjuring a light between them.

Theirs is orange; the kind that comes with summer sunsets and tiger lilies. A color coming only from the warmth they have in their shared hearts.

This is what sets humans and witches apart. It is not soulmates, not the potential for another half to make their souls complete. It is the potential to have a soul.

His father is a hollow man if there’s ever been one, made from metal and fire and not much else. Winding gears and gasoline where a heart should be. Gordo knows he’s the same, magic sparking beneath his skin as the cogs grind against each other to keep him moving. There is emptiness inside of him, a void filled by magic and poison.

There is emptiness inside every witch, inside every one of Magic’s specially bred parasites. That emptiness, as Robert had told his soldiers, could be filled with the spilling of earthen blood.

Gordo thinks that the holes in their hearts should be overflowing by now, if that is truly the case. Robert Livingstone is many things, but honest is not one of them. It hasn’t worked for Gordo yet, all things besides.

“Any good places to eat around here?” he asks the girl at the register.

She nods, ripping her gaze away from the couple. “Yeah, we’ve got brochures and whatnot if you need ‘em.” She gestures to a stand containing many such amalgamations of terrible graphics. “Knock yourself out.”

“Any you recommend?” He asks, raising an eyebrow at the eyesores.

“Why, only our very own Green Creek Inn’s luxurious dining area, complete with sixteen different menu options and a daily soup as well as a open bar from seven pm to ten.”

Gordo stares. The receptionist bats her eyelashes.

“Alright then,” he says, cautious of whatever brainwashing she’d been subject too.

The least offensive brochure he can find leads him to the cup and saucer diner, probably named for whatever alien had infected the poor receptionist.

It was homely, not at all busy, and what little customers they had seemed to be regulars that knew the names of all of their waiters. Gordo elects to take a booth to himself and takes a newspaper at the front desk.

2 DEAD AND 12 INJURED IN ATTACK

GROUP CALLING THEMSELVES THE ARCANA MURDERS 7

HOMELAND SECURITY REVEALS THEY HAVE NO LEADS ON LIVINGSTONE CASE

Gordo ignores the headlines, diving straight towards the comics.

Even those with no knowledge of magic know his father. Robert Livingstone has issued a kill order on all things magic has not yet infected, regardless of their sins.

Only some of earth’s children were bred to be hunters. All of Magic’s spawn were bred to kill.

“Hi, welcome to the cup and saucer! My name’s Mark, and I’ll be your server for today!” A tall blonde boy announces, smile wide.

Looking him up and down, Gordo wonders if asking when his shift ends is out of turn. It’s at that point that a more pressing question pushes itself out of his mouth.

There is a calming blue light shining out from Mark’s chest through the green of his work shirt. It looks like the sky, beautiful and bright.

It’s an entire one-eighty to Gordo’s. His tattoos are shining as they always do, reacting to Mark’s glow. They twist and turn like northern lights, never deciding on which color to paint the sky for longer than three seconds.

“What the fuck?” Gordo gasps out.

“Holy shit,” Mark mutters. Then, more enthusiastically, “It’s you.”

“It— how? What?” Gordo’s mouth continues moving without his say so. “This— I have a— what?”

“We’re soulmates.” Mark says, smile clearly fake before as now it’s the truest thing Gordo has seen since he had gazed upon the sun and known it to be a star. It’s as simple as that to him, cut and dry, summed up in barely two words.

“How?” Is all Gordo can think to say. “I can’t have a soulmate, I—“

Mark slides into the booth across from him, holding Gordo’s hands in his own. Gordo is too shell-shocked to argue with his actions, finding the touch more grounding than anything else in the chaos his life had just been thrown into.

“One day, I’m going to find the person who made you think that and I’m going to kill them,” Mark says in a low voice. Gordo has heard death threats enough to know he means it. “But for now, I’m gonna have to settle for convincing you that you can.”

“No, you—“ Gordo stops. The world is watching them, smiling at the glowing teens as if they know every word they are saying. “Let’s take this somewhere more private?”

“Yes.” Mark gets up immediately. “I’m taking off!” He yells towards the kitchens, earning himself a congratulations and an order to bring his boy back later. Mark salutes the disembodied voice, getting out of the booth and lending Gordo a hand to help him up.

His boy.

Fuck.

“This can’t be for real,” Gordo says, safely in the shotgun seat of Mark’s car.

“It is,” Mark assures him. “I’m here, you’re here, we’re both still glowing. It’s real.”

“I’m not physically or biologically capable of having a soulmate.” Gordo is panicking now, the cloud in his judgement allowing more to be said than what probably should.

“You didn’t expect a male soulmate?” Mark guesses, smile fading.

Gordo shakes his head. “I didn’t expect a soulmate, period.”

“Everyone has a soulmate, even if they’re platonic ones,” Mark points out. “Unless—“

“Unless.” Gordo confirms, knowing full well there is only two circumstances where a soulmate would not be in your future; if you were a witch, or if your soulmate was killed by one.

The second came with such a bout of melancholy and pain that the remaining half of the pair often went insane and died soon after. It was clear that, by the glow that still reflected off of each other’s bodies, this was the first.

“You’re a witch.” Mark puts his head in his hands.

“You’re a hunter?” Gordo guesses.

“Not exactly.” Mark’s non answer gives more away than a real one ever could.

“You’re a wolf.”

Wolves are creatures of the earth and of magic, born before the divorce. They took earth’s side in the court case, ultimately becoming Earth’s best soldiers to use against magic. Magic simply didn’t want to hurt wolves, their favorite children. Witches had been made only to help them and their packs, and although the wolves had betrayed them to walk on two legs amongst humans, witches still feel incomplete without them.

Robert Livingstone was the last witch to have a powerful pack. He burned them until their bones were ash and dirt to plant the seeds of his revolution and never looked back.

“Yeah.” Mark rubs the back of his head. “This is such shit.”

Gordo snorts at the blatant understatement. “I’m a witch with a soulmate and you’re a wolf bound to the demon you’re supposed to hunt. I’d say this is a bit more shitty than that.”

“Well,” Mark says, hand in his chin. “If you’re my soulmate, which you very clearly are, that means we share a soul. That means you have a soul. Technically, I’m only supposed to kill soulless monsters.”

“Oh?” Gordo’s lip quirks up at the descriptor. “And how do you know I’m not a soulless monster after all? I could be tricking you.”

Mark shrugs. “That’d be too bad, because that smile really makes me want to kiss you, and I’d hate to get my face bitten off for that.”

Gordo blinks, grateful for his dark complexion for helping to hide his blush. “Um.”

Mark sighs, tipping his head back against the seat cushion. “Fuck. Okay, I’m taking you home with me.”

“No.” Gordo eyes him as if he’s just grown a third head. “What the hell are you insane? You want to take me into a wolf den.”

“We’re not the usual ‘All Witches Should Die’ wolves,” Mark promises. “Unless your last name is Livingstone, they’ll withhold judgement, I promise.”

Gordo stares at him. Mark blanches. “Your last name is Livingstone, isn’t it?”

Gordo nods. “My name’s Gordo Livingstone, it’s a pleasure.”

Mark stares at the roof of the car, looking up to the heavens. “God is testing us.”

“At least we’re hot,” Gordo jokes, for loss of anything else to say .

“You right.” Mark nods, “God cut us a break there.”

Gordo isn’t quite sure if it’s the hysterics or the unexpected comfort Mark provides that gives him the sudden endless capacity for joking about their fate. Gordo is a witch with a soul. It sounds like a setup for the punchline that is this;

Mark’s last name is Bennett. Over a decade ago, Robert Livingstone stepped on the Bennett name and all who carried it, crushing them underfoot.

“You have got to be kidding me.”

“The fates are cruel,” Mark agrees. “Wanna make out before my pack tries to kill you?”

It was as good an idea as any, and Gordo did leave to live a life that would piss off his father.

The Bennett pack, Gordo finds out later, was only mostly decimated. The remaining members included Mark’s older brother Thomas, who is the alpha, Elizabeth, his mate, and Mark, a beta.

“Thomas and Elizabeth aren’t going to actually kill you,” Mark assures him and then reconsiders, saying, “Maybe lightly stab you. I’ll protect you though, don’t worry.”

“I feel so safe, big strong wolf like you going up against an alpha for me.” Gordo rolls his eyes. “Forget killing me, you’re gonna need to give me some soulmate life insurance here. I’m owed.”

“If I had to kill for you I would,” Mark admits. “This is nothing.”

“We met barely more than an hour ago,” Gordo says. “You don’t even know me. You expect me to believe that?”

“You’re my soulmate. You’re mine. Nothing else matters.”

Mark’s brutal honesty hits Gordo like a battering ram every time, breaking down his walls bit by bit until they are crumbling away. Mark has a wholehearted belief in soulmates that shocks Gordo with his conviction. Mark says they’re meant for each other, that fate has decided to bestow a gift upon them and give them each other. Mark has so much stock in it that he knows it to be true. Gordo has so much doubt in fate, so much skepticism that he’s meant for anything but violence that he almost knows it to be a trick.

He lets Mark take him home anyway, leaving his car in the diner’s parking lot as he embarks on the suicide mission of familial approval.

“Who’s your friend?” a blonde woman asks at the door, raising an eyebrow at Gordo.

Gordo supposes he looks worrying enough that he deserves it, tattoos and leather jacket showing even from several feet away.

Mark gestures for Gordo to come closer in leigh of an answer. Gordo complies, sighing as the both of them are once again bathed in an aurora of color.

“Oh my,” the woman says. “You should come in.”

They do, the woman introducing herself as Elizabeth once they are all safely inside.

“You smell like magic,” she tells Gordo.

“Look like it too,” Gordo replies, letting his tattoos swim across his body, moving like living breathing creatures just beneath the skin.

“Impossible,” Elizabeth breathes. “I’m calling Thomas about this, you realize that right?” She directs this at Mark.

“I was hoping you would, this isn’t something I want to keep from him,” Mark says.

“Good. He’s your brother, not your jailer. I’m glad to see you trust him with this at least.” With that , she turns around to head into the backyard, leaving Mark squirming in his seat.

“There a story behind that?” Gordo nods in Elizabeth’s direction. Mark flushes.

“Several,” he admits. “I usually try to make sure he’s not around when I bring someone home.”

“Oh? He homophobic or something?”

“Nah, he’s perfectly willing to remind everyone that he owns a gun and has more than enough money to ruin their lives regardless of gender. That’s kinda the problem.” Mark winces.

“Oh joy,” Gordo deadpans. “Guess I’ll just die then.”

“That’s still to be decided,” a new voice chimes in. An older version of Mark enters the parlour wearing a smile fit for war. “Liz was right, you smell like magic. You smell like a Livingstone.”

Gordo looks at the floor. “I don’t like him any more than you do. That’s kinda why I ran away.”

“You ran away?” Mark gasps. “Where are you staying? Do you need somewhere? I—“

Thomas sends him a look. Mark shuts up.

“The last time my family trusted a Livingstone, everyone I ever loved died.” Thomas sits down on the couch across from Gordo, the action entirely more intimidating than it should have been.

“Yeah well, same here.” Gordo has one memory of his mother; her bloodied face as Robert demonstrated a killing spell for his son to see. “You’re not special.”

He’s in a chokehold before he can finish his next breath, a strangled noise leaving his throat. Mark steps into action immediately, but Elizabeth is quick to hold him back.

“My family died, what do you have to do with that?” Thomas pressed, cutting deeper into Gordo’s airflow before letting him reclaim enough air to stay alive.

Between heavy breaths, Gordo replies. “Nothing, I was a kid. He killed my mom, I didn’t want anything to do with him.”

“He killed his wife? That doesn’t surprise me,” Thomas wonders aloud. “Your father was an anomaly too, a witch with a soulmate. It wasn’t her.”

“Fuck you.” Gordo bares his teeth. Thomas shows his in return, flashing a grin, sharp and deadly.

“Thomas, what the hell?” Mark shouts. “That’s my fucking soulmate.”

“You know what Robert Livingstone did to his soulmate? He killed her. They got into an argument and he ripped her heart out, then he killed everyone else she’d ever touched.” These are a series of truths that should horrify Gordo. Instead they make him more comfortable; his father’s atrocities are common ground, hatred in his veins far more familiar than the glow emanating from his chest.

“My soulmate isn’t Robert fucking Livingstone! Stop projecting his father’s crimes onto him, he didn’t do anything wrong,” Mark growls.

“You’ve known him for what, a day? You’re not the authority on his life or how closely he’s followed the law.”

“Neither are you—“

“Enough.” Elizabeth steps between them. “This is Mark’s soulmate, not someone you can project all your hatred onto. The hunt is for the father, not the son.”

Thomas blinks, then looks down at his feet. “I—“

“Gordo, we’d be glad to house you,” Elizabeth says to him, face doing a complete one-eighty as she sends a dazzling smile his way. “Mark, why don’t you go with him to get his things. He can spend the night here.”

“Yes ma’am.” Mark salutes her, scrambling away from the mated pair and grabbing Gordo’s arm as he rushes out the door.

“That went well,” Gordo snarks.

“I’m sorry my brother is an asshole, but Lizzie obviously approves, so he’ll come around,” Mark assures him. “He just really hates your dad, for obvious reasons.”

“He can join the club,” Gordo grumbles, getting into the shotgun seat of Mark’s car.

“Don’t worry, Lizzie’s officially given you the invite to move into our house. You’re pack now, or you will be, whether Mark likes it or not. You’re already part of Lizzie and I’s.” Mark takes a hand off the steering wheel and grabs Gordo’s own. “You don’t have to go back there.”

Mark, to his credit, is absolutely right. Gordo moves in that night and spends the next three months proving that he isn’t a threat and that he sincerely wants to be there for Mark. Thomas eventually ends up bonding with him over their shared hatred of Gordo’s father. Elizabeth thinks he’s the best of the boys that live there, given that he actually bothers to help with the cleanup after meals.

Gordo’s definition of the word home changes from a prison to a paradise. He’s not entirely sure when it happens.

“You know my father is going to be coming for me, right?” Gordo asks Mark. He’s almost desperate to be rejected, desperate to be back into the routine melancholy and fear of his life. The warm domesticity of it recently has only served to reassure him that he’s living in the calm before the storm, stuck without thunder to count how far away the lightning is. “He doesn’t know where I am yet, but when he finds me, he will try to get me back. He won’t be coming alone either.”

“We can handle him,” Mark promises. “I won’t let him touch you ever again.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Gordo warns.

“I won’t let him touch you ever again.” Mark’s eyes burn into Gordo’s like fire. Gordo wishes the flames would eat him alive.

“Stay here,” Mark orders out of the blue. He runs out of Gordo’s room, leaving him shocked into compliance on his bed.

Mark returns shortly after, holding a box in his hand. It’s beautifully wrapped, shining holographic blues and purples and greens. As Mark gets closer to Gordo, they start to glow once more, their lights reflecting off the paper.

“It’s for you,” Mark says, handing him the gift.

Gordo takes his precious time opening it up, doing his best not to injure the wrapping job. Inside is a much less beautiful cardboard box which Gordo rips into without preamble.

Inside he finds a wolf statue, seemingly made of glass. He pulls it out and holds it in his hand as it reflects the light coming from Matk and Gordo like a prism, projecting rainbows onto every available surface.

“This is beautiful,” Gordo breathes. “I— Thank you.”

“It’s basically an engagement ring for wolves to give to their soulmates” Mark explains. “I wanted to give it to you before, but I figured I’d let you settle in first, see if you really wanted to stay.”

“You’re not getting rid of me any time soon,” Gordo promises Mark, barely able to tear his eyes away from the wolf. “Not before you give me a real engagement ring, anyway.”

They spend the rest of the night curled close together on Gordo’s bed, talking and watching their lights filter through the wolf.

Gordo Livingstone once thought he would be hollow without magic. Now, he knows that is not entirely true. He would not be a witch without magic, but as long as he has Mark, he will always be whole.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> hope u liked it!! ( ˘ ³˘)♥


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